The Kingdom of Little Wounds by Susann Cokal Page B

like stars, Christian reminds himself to think.
Like stars.
He launches himself upward into a fantastical night sky while around him the attendants snore on their pallets.
    On Monday in the palace chapel, Christian is so lost in dreams of the heavens as to be taken aback when Isabel leans toward him, touches his ring finger with her own, and murmurs, “The time is propitious.”
    Immediately Christian feels the prickles of sweat that precede a conjugal encounter. He makes a noncommittal murmur and crosses himself with particular ardor.
    “I will take it under advisement,” he says, staring forward at the amber statue of Saint Ruta, patron of fishermen and ropemakers.
    That afternoon, leaving his councillors in the Presence Chamber, he consults with the physicians and with Stellarius, his astrologer. Is the time in fact well chosen? Is it likely to result in a healthy, well-formed prince? Or would he be wiser to wait till grief no longer assails the Queen, when tranquillity — if such can be attained in these days — makes her womb fertile for the planting?
    “The stars
are
in favor,” says Stellarius, who reads nuances of the heavens better than those of royal expression. He has spread out charts that Christian cannot understand. “It can happen this week, perhaps Thursday.”
    “But we are still in mourning!” Christian cries petulantly.
    Candenzius speaks up: “Her Highness is ripe this very day.” He says this on authority of regular study of her monthly cloths; he will also have Isabel disrobe and open her legs to his probing hand, if Christian wants this additional confirmation.
    The King shudders at the thought. But it is even more upsetting to think he has only one son. Just one slender, puking princely life lies between him and the chaos of unclear succession.
    “Then if it please the King,” Doctor Venslov suggests with an old man’s attempt at delicacy, “he might remember Galen’s advice about marital intercourse, that it take place when the body is in a medial state: not empty nor too full, neither very hot nor very cold, too dry nor too moist. That is, perhaps only a light meal and a moderate draught of wine, maybe some comic entertainment by the dwarfs to lighten the spirits . . .”
    Christian holds his features regally stern. Outnumbered by earnest goodwillers, he agrees to visit the Queen.
    Christian himself was a third son (the older two died of the smallpox), and he surrendered his own name, Ludvig, to take the throne. He tries out the old name now, to see if he can remember how he was in those days.
So, Ludvig my man, it’s time to prime your sword for the battle.
    He feels no difference. Only the injustice of being the most powerful man in the land and yet the one man above all who must not act on his true desires — or antipathies.
    The large state bed where Isabel will receive her husband is draped in cloth of gold, not unlike Sophia’s catafalque; but in this case the gold is woven with red, giving the effect of a shimmering curtain of blood. The color itself is a wish for fertility, that the blood of Isabel and Christian might congeal to form a new prince. Each great event in a woman’s life is marked by it, from her birth to her wedding, her own childbeds, most probably her death.
    Blue, in contrast, is the color of comfort: the Virgin’s mantle, the sky, the ring that Isabel’s grandmother gave her when her parents signed her marriage contract. It would remind her, said Grand-mère, that the same sky arches over both lands.
    Knobby arthritic fingers slipped the ring onto a young slender one. “Nothing has value,” said the old lady, “till it is given away or stolen.” The blue stone glowed with a deep serenity. In all her weight gains and losses, Isabel has never let it leave her hand. She wears it now on her right pinky, where the flesh bulges above and below the golden band and bezel.
    Twisting the ring, urging herself to gain serenity, Isabel orders the state bed